


Saint

by Donda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Mythic!Max, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5066215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, when the Citadel is stable and Furiosa can afford the time to think to herself, she leans back and lets herself think of Max.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoelacanthKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoelacanthKing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Woman King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501704) by [CoelacanthKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoelacanthKing/pseuds/CoelacanthKing). 



Years later, when the Citadel is stable and Furiosa can afford the time to think to herself, she leans back and lets herself think of Max. He is forgotten by most in the Citadel by now. Just another body in the crowd, lost to the blurred memories of the day all their lives had changed. There for an instant and then gone without a trace. A man of no consequence, as far as they knew. Only the women who had been with her on the Fury Road remembered him anymore. But they never really talk about him these days. If he ever is mentioned any more, it's in an almost disbelieving tone, like he's part of some old legend. They haven't seen him, haven't heard from him even, since that day that the lift took them up and he stayed behind.  
  
Furiosa almost wonders herself if he had actually been there at all. She wonders sometimes if maybe he was a ghost, wandering in and then out. Or just a myth. Maybe a figment of her imagination, dreamed up in the delirium of her injuries.  
  
Furiosa laughs despite herself. It's a silly train of thought, she realizes. Max wasn't a ghost, wasn't a figment. He had saved her life, and she his. He had fought beside them, and those days would have gone very differently had he not been there. Max was real.  
  
Her thoughts drift eventually to one of Ace's old stories, told to her so long ago, about the Saints. Eternal, older than the Fall, the ones who wander. The broken ones. The ones that Death doesn't want. Each carrying a virtue. She never forgot that story, never let go of it. She had believed in them when she was younger. Believed that they were out there, wandering and surviving, and that one day, maybe she'd encounter one, for better or worse. And now that she thinks about it again, _Max_ and _Saint_ seem to suddenly click together like the gears of a car, powering her thoughts forward.  
  
_"You don't know who they are or what their virtue is. You don't know when one's gonna slide up to you and pull you down into their suffering. Or sometimes… they can lift you out of it."_  
  
She finds herself wondering what his virtue was, if he were one of these Wasteland Saints.  
  
Strength? He had the strength to keep going, keep fighting, after being beaten down and used, not unlike herself and the women she had stolen away from Joe.  
  
Loneliness? She knows nothing about his life. But he could have had a place here. She had wanted him to have a place here. And he had chosen to leave. Maybe he had his own place to go back to. She doesn't know. But she can't help but feel he had nothing, and no-one.  
  
Pain? She brushes that one off soon after thinking of it. Everything hurts out here. He had been in pain - she could see it in his eyes - but he didn't let it define him.  
  
Determination? She mulls the ideas over in her head.  
  
Endurance.  
  
She remembers, that cold night as she settled in to sleep after Ace's story, thinking of the Saint of Endurance. Endurance had been a trait she had desperately needed at that point in her life. Maybe she had wanted to see it personified. To know it was real. She had wondered what a Saint of Endurance would be like.  
  
She wonders now if perhaps she had finally found out.


End file.
